Reviewed by David Elton Gay, Bloomington, IN

John Wolff’s Proto-Austronesian phonology with glossary is, he tells us, a ‘project to update Dempwolff’s Vergleichende lautlehre (1934-38), the cornerstone of the historical study of the Austronesian languages’ (vol. 1:xi).

W’s book (published as two volumes, with continuous pagination) is divided into three basic sections. The first is an introductory section that consists of three chapters covering the Austronesian languages as a language group, ‘considerations of theory and methodology’ relevant to the study of Proto-Austronesian and, finally, introducing ‘Proto-Austronesian phonemes and other issues of phonology’. Much of what is here is surprisingly introductory, but some of it will be helpful for those with no knowledge of the Austronesian languages.

The second section consists of reconstructions of the phonological histories of selected Austronesian languages. W presents an especially full discussion of the development of the Formosan languages, followed by studies of selected Philippine languages, several of the languages of the Kalimantan Malagasy and Malay, Old Javanese, Toba Batak, Moken, four languages of eastern Indonesia, and six Oceanic languages. W’s approach to historical phonology is theoretically conservative but also very thorough.

The Proto-Austronesian glossary and the registers comprise the third section of the book. The glossary provides Proto-Austronesian forms with definitions, followed by a list of the forms of the words in the respective modern languages. The glossary is followed by registers of modern Austronesian languages and words cited in the glossary, along with their reconstructed Proto-Austronesian form, as well an English-to-Austronesian languages register and registers to the forms in Robert Blust’s and Otto Dempwolff’s works on comparative Austronesian.

The book concludes with a bibliography and index of topical references and is overall a very useful and intriguing work to read. Although theoretically conservative, it will certainly be of interest to anyone working on the Austronesian languages. The one major criticism I have with the book is that the glossary is not fully indexed to the studies of the languages in the book’s second section. Many of the entries are, but not all; and none of the entries in the registers are indexed to the studies. This is surprising given W’s interest in words and their history. In fact, he opens the book by stating that it is a ‘study of the history of words in the Austronesian languages—their origin in Proto-Austronesian or at later stages and how they developed into the forms that are attested in the current Austronesian languages’ (vol. 1: xix). Still, there is an enormous amount of useful information in the book, even if accessing that information is not as easy as it could be.